One of the several critical strands in the “Lincoln” movie concerns the controversy surrounding the Hampton Roads peace talks (February 3, 1865), where President Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward met with Confederate envoys Alexander Stephens, John Campbell and Robert M.T. Hunter for secret discussions about how to end the war on board the River Queen in Union-controlled Hampton Roads, Virginia (near Fortress Monroe).No transcript exists for their conversations that day. Lincoln and Seward died before leaving any recollection of the affair. So historians have mostly relied upon on the dubious reminiscences of former Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens. Partly for this reason, many Civil War historians consider the Hampton Roads talks as little more than a sideshow –one of several improbable efforts undertaken in the last year of the war to end the conflict. According to this view, Francis P. Blair, Sr. (Preston Blair / Hal Holbrook in the movie) was just one of several foolish old men (including the famous and eccentric Horace Greeley) attempting foolish things in the name of peace but having little effect. Both Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln were implacable in their positions by the war’s end. Lincoln, for example, made his preconditions for peace clear from July 18, 1864 forward –an end to the rebellion, the restoration of the union, and the abandonment of slavery. Those three conditions never changed, making true “peace talks” impossible. Yet other historians are more willing to take the Hampton Roads conference seriously, since it did result in a real meeting between Confederate envoys and President Lincoln. Doris Kearns Goodwin takes the conference seriously in Team of Rivals (2005), but one of the best accounts available online which considers them significant and details the events surrounding the peace talks comes from an article by William C. Harris in the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association.

The article helps illustrate ways that the movie takes major liberties in presenting Hampton Roads. The movie has Lincoln meeting with Preston Blair and his children at the Blair House in early January, reluctantly agreeing to secretly “authorize” an unauthorized trip to Richmond for the elder Blair in exchange for their support with the antislavery amendment. In reality, Blair and Lincoln met alone at the White House in December. Lincoln authorized a pass for Blair to travel into enemy lines but not to make any peace overtures. Blair began his journey on January 3, 1865, arriving in Richmond by January 12 and proceeded to outline a wild scheme to Jefferson Davis that included an end to the war followed by a joint expedition of former Confederate and Union troops to remove the French occupation in Mexico. Davis rejected some of Blair’s ideas but agreed to the possibility of talks for ending hostilities between the “two countries.” Blair returned to Washington on January 16 and met with Lincoln on January 18, 1865. The president agreed that Blair could take back to Richmond a message that the president would receive envoys who would be willing to secure peace for “our one common country.” Blair then presented this message to Jefferson Davis on January 21, 1865. Davis subsequently met with Alexander Stephens on January 27. Stephens was his Vice President but also one of his biggest critics. Davis appointed Stephens and two other notable critics of his policies, John A. Campbell and Robert M.T. Hunter, as his envoys (a sign for some historians, by the way, that he wasn’t serious himself about the talks, but wanted to show up his critics). Regardless of the motives, the men traveled toward Union lines on January 29 and met with General Grant on January 30 before they eventually spent the morning of February 3 with Lincoln and Seward.

The movie accelerates and rearranges this timeline pretty ruthlessly. It ignores the fact that Blair took two trips to Richmond (and most of that month) and instead presents him reporting back to Lincoln on or about January 10, 1865 with news that Davis had already appointed his three peace commissioners. Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) then agrees to proceed with the talks if Blair (Holbrook) lobbies for the antislavery amendment. Blair objects to the “horsetrading” but accepts the condition. The next day, Seward (David Strathairn) reveals to Lincoln that he has found out about this deal with Blair and that he objects to it bitterly. ”It’s either the amendment or this Confederate peace,” he says sternly. ”You cannot have both.” This is a central premise of the movie –one only made possible, however, by rearranging historical chronology and omitting contradictory details. If the movie had accepted the actual timeline of events, then the connections between the peace talks and the amendment would not be so obvious, nor would the motivations of the key figures appear so starkly at odds. In other words, there would be less conflict, less drama and eventually less satisfaction in the movie’s resolution.

The movie also ducks the biggest historical controversy over Stephens’s account of Hampton Roads –one which definitely undermines a key element of the Spielberg message. According to the former Confederate vice president, Lincoln offered to allow southern states to reenter the union by ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment “prospectively,” suggesting that they could take up to five more years to put it into effect. Stephens also claimed that Lincoln offered payments of up to $400 million for the South to abandon slavery. Historian William Harris also cites recollections from the other commissioners Campbell and Hunter indicating that Lincoln offered compensation. There is no corroboration for Stephens’s outlandish claim about prospective ratification (which would be utterly unconstitutional) but there is contemporary evidence that Lincoln did consider paying southern states to end the war and abandon slavery. He drafted such a proposal and presented it to his cabinet on February 5, 1865, which unanimously opposed it. Lincoln then dropped the plan. Whether or not he was serious remains an open question. But it’s revealing that this idea –which certainly threatens to complicate views about Lincoln’s support for abolition– does not appear in the “Lincoln” movie at all. Doris Kearns Goodwin addresses it in her book, Team of Rivals(2005) and William Harris analyzes the issue extensively in his article and in subsequent book, Lincoln’s Last Months (2004), but here perhaps is a good illustration of the difference between works of history and historical fiction.

In the scene in Spielberg’s “Lincoln” which introduces the audience to Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R, PA), the chairman of the House Committee of Ways and Means, the script describes the setting in Stevens’ Capitol Hill office as “redolent of politics, ideology (a bust of Robespierre, a print of Tom Paine), long occupancy and hard work” (p. 30). For historians, such characterizations seem heavy-handed and somewhat out-of-date. Older generations of scholars sometimes referred to the radicals as “Jacobins” (borrowing insulting language from the period) and fixated on the eminently quotable and always crusty Stevens, but in recent years, historians have tried to be more attentive to the complexities of wartime partisanship. For example, the fictional character in the movie named Asa Vintner Litton (Stephen Spinella), described in the script as a lame duck radical Republican from Maryland, seems to be based on Rep. Henry Winter Davis. Yet Davis, despite his radical reputation, had a complicated view about the antislavery amendment. He had missed the June 1864 vote on the amendment (intentionally, according to historian Michael Vorenberg in his book, Final Freedom, p. 129) because he considered his omnibus reconstruction plan (the controversial Wade-Davis Bill, which Lincoln pocket-vetoed that summer) preferable to the separate measures for abolition and reconstruction that had been introduced by Rep. James Ashley (R, Ohio) and were being debated again in January 1865. In the film, however, Rep. Litton is the embodiment of pure radicalism and believes more deeply in Ashley’s amendment than anybody else –even in some ways Ashley himself– calling it “abolition’s best legal prayer.”

The film plays fast-and-loose in such minor ways with radical figures, mainly for the sake of simplicity but also sometimes it appears just out of error. ”Bluff” Wade is a character in the script identified as a Republican senator from Massachusetts who somewhat implausibly attends the House Republican strategy sessions in Stevens’s office. Presumably, the intention was to make this figure Benjamin “Bluff” Wade, the Republican radical (and Davis’s partner in his failed Reconstruction bill), who was born in Massachusetts but served as a Republican senator from Ohio.

For the sake of simplicity, the film also makes Thaddeus Stevens the central radical figure organizing the amendment’s passage, even more so than the measure’s sponsor, Ashley. This is not how many historians characterize Stevens’s role. He was an important figure, but probably not the central one in securing passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Stevens had only four index entries in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals (2005), a nearly 800-page book from which the screenplay was adapted. Stevens plays a somewhat larger role in Michael Vorenberg’s more compact Final Freedom (2001) with seven index entries but even there he is clearly superseded by other figures such as Ashley and Senator Lyman Trumbull (R, IL), who is not even mentioned in the film. The latest and most comprehensive study of wartime abolition policies –James Oakes’s Freedom National (2012)– contains a mere six index entries for Stevens.

By contrast, Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) has about 45 speaking parts in the Spielberg film, apparently second only to Abraham Lincoln(Scene 17). He looms large as a counter-weight to the president –Lincoln’s near opposite in both style and policy. Their confrontation in the White House kitchen is one of the movie’s most pivotal scenes and also arguably one of its most historically implausible. Besides the unlikely setting, scriptwriter Tony Kushner seems to be investing many older –and quite hostile– ideas about Stevens into this conversation which contrasts Lincoln’s calculated, pragmatic approach to Stevens’s rigid, ideological worldview. He actually has Stevens / Jones saying at one point, in defense of his sweeping plans for revolutionizing the South, ”Ah, shit on the people and what they want and what they are ready for! I don’t give a goddamn about the people and what they want! This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the good of the people without caring much for any of ‘em.” Such lines (minus the cursing) would be perfectly at home in the captions of D.W. Griffith’s ground-breaking and controversial silent film, “Birth of A Nation” (1915). Griffith’s film depicted Reconstruction as an utter failure in part because of the unyielding attitudes of radicals like Austin Stoneman (the character based upon Stevens). In the kitchen debate between Lincoln and Stevens, scriptwriter Kushner seems to embrace elements of this view. He told NPR, for instance, “The abuse of the South after they were defeated was a catastrophe, and helped lead to just unimaginable, untellable human suffering.”

Still, Kushner’s / Spielberg’s representation of Stevens contains important nuances that save Tommy Lee Jones’s performance from being merely emblematic of the so-called “Lost Cause.” The gripping scene during the House debates where Stevens / Jones restricts himself to endorsing “equality before the law” and nothing more underscores the pragmatic considerations that often motivated Radicals, especially during this moment in the Civil War. However, the scene is also full of small-bore examples of artistic license. The excerpts from the House debates are not real quotations from the Congressional GlobeJanuary 5, 1865 or even apparently from the sometimes more descriptive newspaper accounts. Instead, they appear to be a creative collage of materials pulled together by Tony Kushner from a variety of secondary sources. Michael Vorenberg, for example, quotes Stevens announcing during a different debate –as part of a concerted radical strategy during this period to avoid inflammatory questions about racial equality — that he “never held to that doctrine of negro equality … not equality in all things -simply before the laws, nothing else.” That was on –ten days before the movie has Lincoln lecturing Stevens about pragmatism in the White House kitchen and three weeks before it has the congressman saying something similar on the floor of the House (Scene 28). In the movie, Stevens / Jones supposedly states on January 27, 1865 that, “I don’t hold with equality in all things only with equality before the law and nothing more.” This prompts Mary Lincoln in the House gallery to remark to her black dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckley, “Who’d ever guessed that old nightmare capable of such control?” To this, Keckley excuses herself angrily and leaves. Yet there’s no evidence from any contemporary report or from Keckley’s own recollection that she and Mary Lincoln ever attended the House debates. Instead, what the filmmakers have done here by rearranging events and by inventing selected details is to increase the drama and ultimately to attribute Stevens’s “conversion” to Lincoln’s intervention. Historical accounts give Lincoln no such credit, nor do they present a narrative pulsating with such drama.

One final footnote to the presentation of Thaddeus Stevens concerns the filmmakers’ curious decision to place him in bed with his mixed-race housekeeper, Lydia Hamilton Smith, near the very end of the film. This is a reference to widely held suspicion (among contemporaries and historians) that Stevens had a romantic relationship with Smith who stayed with him both in Lancaster and in Washington. Stevens himself never publicly acknowledged this relationship –nor did Smith. They were buried in separate graveyards (Stevens famously in an integrated cemetery in 1868; Smith, who often passed as white, revealingly, was buried in a segregated Catholic cemetery in Lancaster many years later). It may well have been true that they were lovers, but by injecting this issue into the movie, the filmmakers risk leaving the impression for some viewers that the “secret” reason for Stevens’s egalitarianism was his desire to legitimate his romance across racial lines. This type of simplistic connection would appall most historians, but the awkward nature of the revelation (Scene 43) makes it plausible as an interpretation.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans’ recent proposal for a Mississippi state-issued license plate in honor Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was also an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan, has become the issue of considerable national attention. This controversy has been heightened with the refusal of Governor Haley Barbour to publicly denounce the group’s proposal.

Forrest is a controversial figure in American history; praised by some as a military genius and vilified by others for leading an 1864 massacre of black Union troops at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and for his position as the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan following the war.

When he was asked about his stance, Governor Barbour replied: “I don’t go around denouncing people. That’s not going to happen. I don’t even denounce the news media.” He went on to add; “I know there’s not a chance it’ll become law.”

On Penn State’s blog of the Civil War Era, Sean Trainor, weighed in with a passionate response. “This should not be, and it cannot be,” he said, “We cannot allow [the] approval… of remembering so odious, so miserable, so unforgivable a figure as Nathan Bedford Forrest.” Trainor characterizes Forrest as a man who earned his fortune in slave trade, who led a massacre of surrendered African-American troops, and the person who ended his “illustrious personal history” as the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

He went on to say: “Forrest’s memory is… offensive… to all Americans. No amount of military ‘genius,’ no feat or maneuver on a battlefield near or far will make Forrest anything more than what he was: a grim manifestation of America’s most hateful legacy and the author of countless sorrows.”

Bloggers who defend the Sons of Confederate Veterans have shared their opinions in defense of the proposal. In a blog posted on “The Confederate American” website entitled “Nathan Bedford Forrest: Civil Rights Pioneer,” supporters express the belief that Forrest’s name has been unjustly tarnished by the evolving impressions of the Ku Klux Klan and false accusations about his actual involvement.

“As usual, the NAACP and the news media are attempting to shape opinions rather than impartially relay facts.” These supporters state that Forrest distanced himself from the Klan once it became a purely racial organization, and went on to embrace a “radical” doctrine that was “light years” ahead of other measures of the day, even in the North. They support this with quotes from a speech that Forrest is said to have made to a prominent civil rights group at the time.

“The good name of General Nathan Bedford Forrest should not be allowed to be falsely demeaned by those with a leftist ‘politically correct’ agenda. On the contrary, he must be remembered as a civil rights pioneer who tried his best to head off the over 100 years of racial strife that followed the War Between the States.”

After African American soldiers were not allowed to participate in the Union army’s Grand Review in Washington DC in May 1865, Harrisburg residents organized their own event on November 14, 1865 for those who served in the United States Colored Troops. While this earlier post provides an overview, several other newspaper articles offer interesting accounts about the event. “No day could have been chosen more propitious for the occasion,” as the correspondent for the Philadelphia (PA) Inquirerobserved that November 14 was “one of the finest of this most pleasant Indian summer.” After Simon Cameron delivered a speech, letters from those who could not attend were read aloud. General Benjamin F. Butlerexplained that he had “witnessed…[African American soldiers’] bravery and good conduct on the battle-field, and, above all, their devotion and unswerving loyalty to the flag and government.” Even “when their offers of service in the beginning of the way were rejected with contumely,” George L. Stearns noted that they still “promptly volunteered at the call of their country when she needed them to help conquer a relentless foe.” Others used the event to argue for equal rights. “All constitutional privileges, all laws, all ordinances, all regulations of States, discriminating against colored men, must be made null and void,” as Senator Henry Wilson proclaimed. The event ended with “the John Brown Song,” which as the Philadelphia (PA) Inquirer correspondent described, “the assemblage sang…with great zeal.” You can also read more about the ceremony in an excerpt from Ceremonies at the Reception of Welcome to the Colored Soldiers of Pennsylvania (1865)

The Soldiers Monument in Carlisle, Pennsylvania was created in a post war effort to honor the Cumberland County soldiers who died as a result of the Civil War. The efforts to build the monument were initiated by the Soldiers Monument Association in early January 1867, which included General Lemuel Todd as Chair, General Robert Miller Henderson as President, and Colonel Erkuries Beatty as Corresponding Secretary. The minutes of the Soldiers Monument Association are available for reference at the Cumberland County Historical Society in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Fundraising continued into early 1871 until the Monument Association obtained the five thousand dollars needed to erect the monument. The extra money financed the dedication ceremonies as well as the fence that enclosed the monument. A Carlisle mechanic, Richard Owens, was responsible for contracting and designing the monument, which contained a “Roll of Honor” that provided the names of the three hundred and forty-four Cumberland County officers and soldiers that died in combat or during their term of service in the army during the Civil War. The official unveiling of the thirty foot tall Soldiers Monument took place on the Public Square near the Carlisle Courthouse on August 19, 1871 with Lemuel Todd as Chief Marshall of the ceremonies and Major General Heintzelman as the presenter of the unveiled monument. Available on Google Books, Carlisle, Old and New gives a brief description of the monument as well as some of the other historical features in Carlisle.

Frederick Douglass gave a speech in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on March 2, 1872 about his work relating to Santo Domingo. In 1871 President Ulysses S. Grant had appointed Douglass to the Commission of Inquiry for the annexation of Santo Domingo the United States of America. Douglass delivered his speech at Rheem’s Hall, which was located behind the Old Court House in Carlisle. Today that location is a parking lot. Reports about the speech did not appear in any national newspapers, but his visit created a local controversy. George Z. Bentz, who was the manager of the Bentz House and a Republican, refused to let Douglass eat his dinner in hotel dining room with the white guests. (The Bentz House stood on what is today the former Wellington Hotel on East High Street). The American Volunteer used the incident to characterize Republicans as hypocritical. “We have in this circumstance positive evidence that the Radicals are just as loath to recognize negro-equality as the Democrats,” as the American Volunteer observed. While the Herald “[found] no fault with” the manager’s decision, the editors argued that policies which denied African Americans entry into a hotel “[were] simply silly and wicked.” In addition, Historic Carlisle recently added a Wayside Maker for Douglass’ visit.

Admirers of Robert Hicks, the acclaimed author of Widow of the South will be very pleased to know that in a couple of weeks his new novel, A Separate Country, will appear. The new novel has as its main actor John Bell Hood and there are other connections, too, with Franklin, Tennessee. But the real hero of this remarkable new work is the city of New Orleans where Hood and others head to rebuild their lives and their fortunes. The Crescent City appears in all its racial, social, and economic complexity at a time following the Civil War when its “Americanization” was transforming its character. Separate Country will be published by Grand Central Publishing and is due out September 23.

The Library of Congress has a section within their website called The Learning Page. This section contains great links to lesson plans, activities, and other resources. In particular, there is a great page within the Civil War and Reconstruction section called The Travails of Reconstruction. This page has some nice information as well as good links to some primary documents.

The University of Houston has created a wonderful resource called Digital History. The site itself contains an abundance of great information presented in an interactive manner. In particular, the site contains an interesting section titled Reconstruction: Interpreting Primary Sources. This section contains several transcribed primary sources relating to the reconstruction period and concludes with several questions that can be used as either great class discussion, or as a seperate assignment. I recommend checking it out and browsing the site.

PBS has a great website for the Reconstruction period. The site contains interactive activities for students as well as lesson plans for teachers. The site is based off of a PBS program on reconstruction which can be viewed in its entirety on the site as well.